Craig, At my previous employer, an ABC affiliate, our management decided to use the SAP channel to run the National Weather Service audio. How many calls do you think we fielded every day for the next 6 months? We ended up with quite a comprehensive "cheat sheet" of television makes and models and how to turn off the SAP function. They still do this practice, fourteen years later, and they still field a couple of calls a week for "weather" audio in the program. If the government hands out ATSC receivers, there will also be some sort of support line set up. What happens if the STB is DOA out of the box? What happens if lightning strikes and zaps the STB? What happens if the box suffers some other infant mortality? Who is responsible for repairs? I predict that what will ultimately happen, if there is any STB giveaway at all it will be funded and administered by a consortium of spectrum users that want the channels freed up. Just like now where every 2GHz ENG radio is being replaced by Nextel in a market-by-market basis. The government isn't giving away 2 gig radios, Nextel is allowing each station to replace their gear then reimburse them for the costs. Ditto with this STB "giveaway." Somebody will fund a stack of coupons good for one STB, but each viewer will have to go out to Best Buy or whoever to exchange the coupons for boxes. Then the warranty and customer service problems belong to the store where the coupon was redeemed. John Shutt ----- Original Message ----- > Now flash forward a bit to whatever date that NTSC is turned off and > the Government starts handing out ATSC receivers. How may of these > service calls can you support per day? Five, Ten? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.